Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 2; March 2001
"A Fight may be a celebration"
- linguistic confusion, discordant temperament and dramatic resolution on a weekend course.
Janet Braithwaite
As a participant on a recent weekend course in Latin American music, I first became clearly aware of an uneasy tension in the group quite early on in the Saturday morning session, although at first I dismissed the edginess as a purely personal reaction to "funny" remarks by a member of the group which didn't appeal to my sense of humour.
There were eight participants on the course - three women (a flautist, a saxophonist and myself also on saxophone) and five men (a double bassist, a pianist, a guitarist, a banjoist and my partner also on banjo) - and two tutors - a young English woman, who had trained as a classical violinist and had become interested in Latin American music as a way of widening her range and because she enjoyed the very different approach implicit in folk music, and a Chilean man in his mid forties, playing guitar and a variety of traditional pipes and percussion instruments. Apart from the flautist and the young woman tutor, who were both in their mid twenties, the rest of the group were in their forties or above - a rather mature and well-balanced group, as one might have thought ! The banjoist was himself a tutor at the centre, and in fact my partner had attended and very much enjoyed a course he had done a few weeks previously, and described him as a "life-and-soul-of-the-group" kind of tutor. It gradually came out in conversation that the guitarist, a modest and rather retiring man, was also a tutor there.
The build-up of tension started almost imperceptibly with a series of flippant remarks by the banjoist, which were obviously intended to be funny and at the same time had a slightly challenging edge. These were interspersed with short phrases of music - sometimes jazz, sometimes dance band Latin, but always of a style definitely not relevant to what we were learning about.
The first overt challenge came when the bassist courteously questioned the Chilean tutor's use of the word "call", because he was not sure whether he had said "call" or "chord". The tutor explained it as a short, repeated phrase used to introduce a new rhythmic pattern. The bassist and the banjoist then likened the "call" to a chorus or middle eight in a standard jazz structure (i.e. in a 24 bar standard - ABA - or a 32 bar standard - AABA - A is an 8 bar chorus and B is the middle eight, introducing a different melody). The tutor said this was not so, and again attempted to explain the "call". At this point the bassist accepted the explanation, but the banjoist continued to categorise it as a chorus, persistently attempting to fit this unfamiliar feature into an already known pattern. I had already come across it in African music and dance, where the lead drummer plays a similar repeated rhythmic phrase to signal a change of rhythm to the musicians and a change of step to the dancers. I therefore broke into the argument and attempted an explanation in these terms and one or two of the rest of the group made comments, so that the argument petered out and the tension was temporarily diffused, although the banjoist continued to throw in odd mocking remarks.
From conversation with some of the group during the coffee break which followed, I found that some people had been under the impression that the course would be about playing the bossa nova, the tango and possibly salsa, and were surprised, and in one or two cases disappointed, to be concentrating on rural traditional music. It's true that when I first read about the course I had also jumped to this conclusion, but on a more careful reading, and certainly when I received the fuller description after applying, it was clear to me that I'd initially misunderstood. In my case and my partner's and also the guitarist's, it made no difference, because we were all looking for something different from our usual range of material with rather open minds, but the pianist for one certainly felt a bit cheated.
It rapidly became clear in the following session that the banjoist certainly felt cheated in his expectations and was highly aggrieved. After a brief period of his usual asides, both verbal and musical, he came right out with the burning question: - "When are we going to start playing tangos and bossa novas ? That's Latin American music." The tutor riposted with: - "That's Brazilian music, which is a vast subject in itself. I know about Cuban, Chilean, Peruvian and some other kinds of South American music, but not Brazilian music. I haven't time to learn all the types of South American music, and I can't teach you what I don't know. People here are ignorant. They think that the tango and bossa nova ARE Latin American music, and they have no idea of the range of styles and backgrounds of music from so many different countries with so many different influences." The banjoist then threw back the remark: - "The Americans call it Latin American music. Are they all wrong?", which brought forth an angry response about the take-over and exploitation of these particular forms of Brazilian music by North American commercial music.
The banjoist was not one to desist. It was not very long before he made his next challenge in the form of a remark in a slightly aggressive tone of voice: - "You're not singing the rhythm you've written up." "No," replied the tutor, "I'm not. I'm not meant to be singing it." He then told the banjoist to play a rhythmic phrase after him, which he repeated several times, each time telling the banjoist emphatically that he was wrong. The point of this exercise was to prove that it was no use trying to copy exactly, as the banjoist insisted on trying to do, when he should be trying to create something of his own based on the rhythmic pattern. The banjoist got angrier and angrier, and the tension in the group rose. This challenge finished with the tutor almost shouting: - "You are the only one who doesn't understand."
With neither of them willing to back down, there could be no resolution to the conflict. For the rest of the morning the banjoist maintained a resentful silence, while doing his own thing musically. The result for the group was general embarrassment and acute unease, which interfered with the musical togetherness. Bad emotional vibrations have a destructive effect on the mutual effort of concentration required in such a group, and this in turn affects both each individual's playing and the group awareness and cooperative sensibility.
During the afternoon there was a two-hour break, and when we re-assembled after tea there was a lighter atmosphere, with only a minimum of underlying tension. The afternoon session went well and everybody relaxed.
It was to be a short respite, however. Very soon after the beginning of the evening session, in response to a sung pattern by the tutor, the banjoist sang out a snatch of vaguely Spanish-sounding tune in a fairly loud and casual voice, which sounded as if he was slightly drunk. The tutor took it as mocking mimicry and made an immediate and angry challenge, which escalated into an aggressive interchange between the two of them. Both of them claimed to be speaking for their respective colleagues, although in fact the rest of the group had carefully avoided getting involved in the crossfire, as had the woman tutor who took a full part in the teaching and demonstrating, but no part at all in the conflict. Both complained of lack of respect, and the tutor repeated the phrase - "you're the only one who doesn't understand". The row ended in a tense deadlock, and the session continued in acute discomfort.
Afterwards in the bar the banjoist continued to fume. As a professional musician he felt affronted, and as a teacher he was outraged by the Chilean's approach. Various members of the group tried to calm him down. When someone suggested very diplomatically that maybe some of his remarks could have been misinterpreted as being slightly provocative, he insisted vehemently that he had not intended to provoke or mock. The guitarist pointed out that it was acutely embarrassing for the group, and that they should have both backed down. Somebody else suggested that he should try and talk to the tutor in private and sort out the problem, but he declared that he was definitely going to leave first thing in the morning. One group member had already had a word with the woman tutor, and had requested her to ask her colleague to talk to the banjoist in private. She did in fact come into the bar and talk to the banjoist herself, but she was acting as spokeswoman for the Chilean and it only made the banjoist even angrier. He kept repeating the phrase - "my face doesn't fit". Eventually, as the evening wore on, he relapsed into his other mode, and began to regale us with tales of his travels in the U.S.A. and the musicians he'd met and played with there.
In the morning he was as good as his word, and there was no sign of him. When the group met, the atmosphere was completely relaxed, and we swung enthusiastically into an excellent session. There was no explanation, no apology, no self-justification on the part of the tutor, and the group dynamic seemed unclouded by any emotional hangover from the previous day.
My initial reaction to the course of events during the Saturday was one of shock. The group had survived successfully and functioned very well for the remaining time, but at the cost of the non-participation of a member who was a highly competent musician with much to contribute, although in retrospect I feel his possible contribution was severely limited by his negative attitude.
My own approach to any situation where there is a clash of personalities within a group or where I find myself developing a strong dislike for a particular group member is to talk in private with the individuals concerned. Depending on how I feel about the situation and the people concerned, I might directly confront the problem or, much more likely, I would talk to the individuals separately over coffee and try to find out as much as possible about them in general in a relaxed and conversational way. One result of this attempt is that it almost always tends to defuse any personal antagonism I might feel towards a group member by lessening the obsessive, personal aspects, which usually lie behind these tense situations, and at the same time increasing the structural sense of the historical, cultural and emotional identity of the other with whom I am confronted. Here I was witnessing a totally different stance where the tutor seemed to go right into the personal animosity with explosive effect, and obviously felt completely justified in doing so. I found the experience both shocking and thought-provoking.
The second result of increasing one's knowledge and understanding of the background of participants in the group is that it usually reveals the sub-texts suspended beneath the surface text. In this case, although I was not responsible for the group, I nevertheless began, almost without noticing it, to engage the protagonists individually in conversation, out of interest in such an unusually passionate confrontation and the underlying structures of its dissonance.. A rich complexity of sub-texts gradually became apparent.
The Chilean, it turned out, had been living in England for twenty years, having come here originally as a refugee. He had been a nineteen-year-old student of mining engineering when President Allende was assassinated in 1973, and had at some point been arrested and imprisoned for political protest activities involving music. In England he had turned himself into a professional musician, both in order to earn a living and also to keep alive the music and culture of his own country. The intervening years had in no way diluted his political loyalties, and he remained passionately and overtly anti-American.
The banjoist, on the other hand, made no secret of his interest in and admiration for the U.S.A. and all things American, especially American music. He had travelled widely in North America, and was planning to attend a banjo convention there later in the year, and he obviously maintained a wide circle of contacts there. He entertained us at length with his stories of meetings with jazz musicians, and he was knowledgeable on the history of jazz and the life histories of its performers, of whom he spoke with sympathy and insight. He gave no clue at all to his political views, but he was obviously and enthusiastically pro-American.
The Chilean's commitment and activities in the present flow out of his history in a continuous line, the exile's loss of homeland and cultural roots transforming itself into a positive and passionate devotion to spreading the knowledge of his music and culture and to building bridges between different cultures through the medium of music-making by both performance and educational work. He tours extensively with his own band playing the traditional rural music of various Latin American countries, and is also a founder member of the One World Band, a group of musicians from different countries collaborating in playing and exploring music from different cultures. He is also working on an educational project linking schools in East London with schools in Chile, as well as running adult workshops such as the one we were attending.
The banjoist is equally a man with a mission. He trained as a classical guitarist, but subsequently has devoted much of his life to regenerating interest in the banjo and its music. The banjo is unusual in that it is widely perceived as comical. It has none of the romantic associations of the mandolin, to which it is similar in both sound and structure. It is frequently associated with George Formby, who, in fact, played the ukulele and not the banjo at all. As a result people who play the banjo often suffer from a slight inferiority complex. As a leading exponent of the banjo in this country, the banjoist has had to struggle with this public perception most of his life, and he has used similar methods to the Chilean in his efforts to address public ignorance and to popularise his instrument. He also leads his own band, and arranges music both for the band and for smaller ensembles, as well as publishing and distributing a two-monthly magazine for banjo enthusiasts which has an international readership.
As far as teaching method goes, the two men are both confident and versatile performers and demonstrators, well able to hold their position centre stage. In other ways their methods of teaching differ considerably. The banjoist, during his course, gave out substantial amounts of written material - both technical notes and sheet music - much of which was designed to be used after the course. On the Latin American music course, there was some written material, but it was kept to a minimum and a fair proportion of it was written up on the board as we went along. I felt that this method was entirely appropriate on a course devoted to a kind of music which was essentially in the aural tradition: it reflected the intangible and elusive ephemerality which is the essential quality of such music, which hangs in the air for a moment and is gone, whose detailed form is momentary, individual and unique, although its underlying structure may be repeated again and again over time, and has been voiced down and handed down through generations, absorbing changes from within and foreign influences from without over centuries. Possibly the crux of their antagonism lay here in the essential difference between the fluidity of aurality and the fixedness of the written tradition. The banjoist seemed irritated by the lack of written material and unable to accept differences in musical structure with which he was unfamiliar. Although he was used to playing and improvising in the jazz tradition, which would appear to have much in common with the aural tradition, he seemed to perceive improvisation as a process of embellishment on a fixed format, rather than a way of playing which allows a greater fluidity within the structure itself and depends more on spontaneous interaction between the players. Some of his muttered remarks in the sessions and his criticisms later in the bar suggested that he saw the more fluid form of the sessions and the absence of written material as a sign of a lack of preparation and professionalism on the part of the tutors, whereas my feeling is that the Chilean was conveying a true sense of a musicality and way of playing which pre-dates the written text, as far as this is possible with a group of players whose entire musical upbringing has taken place within the structures of literacy and visuality.
Working with the sub-texts requires time, which is in decidedly short supply on a course lasting two days. It also requires a minimum degree of self-awareness and willingness to accept a part in the shared responsibility for the quality of the interaction within the group on the part of each participant. There was no sign that the banjoist saw his own behaviour as being in any sense responsible for the tense atmosphere within the group: rather he saw himself as being picked on unfairly. There was a definite schoolboy quality of "testing out" a strong teacher about his provocation and a momentary whiff of the schoolroom atmosphere of mixed anticipation and uneasy fear before the inevitable explosion, so much so that maybe there was some element of unconscious projection from schoolboy memories on his part. The group as a whole appeared not to take sides at all in the dispute, and, apart from some effort on Saturday evening to calm the situation, displayed simply a desire to concentrate on the music.
From the point of view of the tutor, working with the sub-texts presupposes an interest in the individual and his or her life history and cultural background and a desire to understand how this might influence present behaviour and relations within the group. When working in this way, there is always a risk of weighing the scales too much in favour of attention towards the individual at the possible cost of the group. In this case the Chilean tutor acted clearly and decisively to protect the integrity of the group, and he had no qualms about ousting a member of the group who insisted on challenging his authority, and who was apparently unable or determined not to empathise with the music and cultural framework that he was attempting to recreate for us. He also had the strength of character and sheer nerve to carry it off.
According to the Cuban saying, "a fight may be a celebration": there was certainly a celebratory feel to the last day of the course, with the dramatic resolution of tension releasing an atmosphere of cohesive energy and exhilaration throughout the group.
